Jesse Jackson Jr., the son of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, ripped into former President Barack Obama after he said the ex-president used his father’s funeral as a sounding board to bash President Donald Trump.
In a scathing rebuke, Jackson Jr. lit into Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton for using the late civil rights icon’s memorial service to take shots at Trump.
Jackson Jr. said the aforementioned ex-president who claimed to be “close” with the elder Jackson didn’t really know his father, after they used their eulogies to bash the president, his policies, and his vision for America during last Friday’s memorial.
“Yesterday, I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,” Jackson Jr. said Saturday during a private memorial service at Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago.
“He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these — those who are disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected — demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as people.
“And it speaks volumes about who the Rev. Jesse Jackson was.”
Take a listen —
During Friday’s service at Chicago’s House of Hope, Obama used much of his time to eulogize Jackson to take digs at President Trump, calling each day a “new assault on our democratic institutions.”
“Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other, and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all,” the former president said.
“Everywhere we see greed and bigotry being celebrated, and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength. It’s hard to hope in those moments.”
“It’s hard to hope in those moments,” Obama said, adding it was tempting to “maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm to pass.”
Jackson wouldn’t have wanted that, Obama insisted.
“But this man, Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson, inspires us to take a harder path. His voice calls on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope.”
In the aftermath of Jackson’s death, stories surfaced that Obama and Jackson’s relationship was tense and that the two were never very close.
During a taping of a “Fox & Friends” news show from 2008, Jackson was caught making crude off-air comments against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation.
First posted online by the blog TVNewser, Jackson is caught saying Obama was “talking down to black people,” and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them “how to behave.”
Fox News never aired the comments, but the clip still exists and is now circulating wildly. Take a look —